Godfrey Reggio: Filmmaker and Director
of the Qatsi Film Trilogy: Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi
An interview by Rod MacIver
I take dirty money and wash it. I make it clean.
Godfrey Reggio makes films about modern, technological life versus nature and
ancient cultures. Those films include the Qatsi trilogy – the first two
of which have been completed (Koyaanisquatsi and Powasqqatsi),
and the third, Naqoyqatsi, which is now in search of funding.
Born in New Orleans in 1940 and raised in southwest Louisiana, he entered the
Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic pontifical order, at age 14. He fasted
and lived a life of silence and prayer until the age of 28. After being ordained,
he taught grade school, secondary school and college. In the 1960s, he worked
with juvenile street gangs and helped establish a facility that provided medical
care to 12,000 Hispanics in Santa Fe. In 1972, he co-founded a non-profit foundation
focused on media development, the arts, community organization and research.
In 1974 and 1975, with funding from the American Civil Liberties Union, Reggio
co-organized a multimedia public interest campaign on the invasion of privacy
and the use of technology to control behavior.
Koyaanisquatsi , the title of Reggio's debut film, is the Hopi Indian word meaning
"life out of balance." Created between 1975 and 1982, the film is
an apocalyptic vision of the collision of technology and the environment. The
musical score was composed by Philip Glass, who also composed the music for
Powaqqatsi, Reggio's second film. That film focuses on hand-made cultures,
cultures where slow is the norm and where the dignity is in the work -- cultures
completely outside our modern mindset. The film also explores the splendor that
disappears when technology encroaches on nature and ancient cultures.
Godfrey lives and works in windowless office in an old building in Sante Fe.
He is a little hard to find – no listed phone number – and his website
contains no contact information. “My films have to speak for themselves”
he explained to me when we met. The lines between his life and his work are
blurred. On the couch near his desk is a pile of pillows and blankets. That’s
where he sleeps. He is a tall, thin man with a tendency to dress in black.
RWM: How would you describe your work Godfrey?
GR Well, like a cat that barks. For me, the power of art is its mystery, its
ambiguity. The meaning is in the eye of the beholder. Unlike propaganda or advertising,
where the meaning is absolutely clear and, in fact from my point of view, insulting
to the viewer, in the case of art, the viewer is in the driver’s seat.
It’s up to her; it’s up to him to posture what it means. While I
might have this or that intention in creating a film like Koyaanisquatsi , any
meaning or value it might have comes exclusively from the beholder. The film's
role is to provoke, to raise questions that only the audience can answer. This
is the highest value of any work of art. That is the power of these films. If
they embrace ambiguity with clarity, paradoxical measures for sure, then they
achieve the possibility of offering the viewer a meaningful experience.
Now that’s not to say that there’s not passion or point of view.
I do have a point of view –- the rocket ship 20th century as it blasts
from human moorings into the void of space. The thermal-nuclear age. Thousands
and thousands of above and below ground tests have doubled the background radiation
of the planet and blasted our center as human beings into the new world of globalization.
Nuclear weapons are symbols for the globalized world. And, for me, this is a
horror that extends beyond military horror. But, at the end of the day, if we
do our job, and if 100 people see the film, there will be a 100 different views
about what it means. My colleagues and I set the cards. We use familiar images.
But we try to reposition them. Give them another point of view. Another perspective.
We examine ordinary living from an extraordinary point of view.
I’ve tried to incorporate beauty into these films, because I feel that
beauty is the vehicle through which the viewer can open up to receive the truth
that I’m trying to offer. I’ve tried to show cities like Los Angeles,
New York –- hyper-industrial grids. And show them in a way that’s
different. I’ve used time lapse photography to show traffic patterns,
because they show us more about how we live our lives than the way we’re
used to seeing them. For some, these are beautiful images. They inspire or move.
I think that’s how beauty has power. It reveals something beyond appearance.
We usually perceive our world, our way of living, as beautiful because there
is nothing else to perceive. If one lives in this world, the globalized world
of high technology, all one can see is one layer of commodity piled upon another.
In our world, “original” is the proliferation of the standardized.
Copies are copies of copies. There seems to be no ability to see beyond, to
see that we have encased ourselves in an artificial environment. We do not live
with nature any longer; we live above it. Off of it. Nature has become the resource
to keep this artificial or new nature alive.
I could show the obvious deprivation of poverty, of war, of pestilence, of
social injustice, but to me, seeing those things have never corrected them.
There are plenty of films that show the horror of the world. I try to show a
horror that’s beyond that horror. A horror that’s not available
to our mentality.
The third film, Naqoyqatsi, now in search of funding, is about how all together,
all at once, the entire world is moving in the same direction. How human and
biological diversity is sacrificed on the altar of technological homogenization
. “Naqoy” means “war” in Hopi; “Katse” means
“life.” The war referred to is beyond the war of the battlefield.
It’s total war. It’s sanctioned aggression against the force of
life. It’s the price we pay for the pursuit of our technological happiness.
So, it’s war as technology. It’s war as an effort to capture that
which we desire. It’s war that parents are telling their children to engage
in. It is beyond poverty, beyond wars of inequity, beyond genocide. Way beyond
genocide, because it’s war against all life on the planet that we don’t
control.
RWM: How would you would define a life “well-lived”?
GR: First of all, I don’t think we’re here to be happy. Happiness
is not something that can be sought. It is the result, the fruit of, the effect
of. I believe that we’re here to live creative lives. If we can’t
create our own condition of life, if we can’t participate in that, if
we can’t use our energies at conjuring something from within our spiritual
imagination, within our poetic souls, which we all have –- it’s
not limited to a few elite –- then what’s the point of being here?
It’s not to get a big house, get a car, have a vacation, have social security,
punch in 9 to 5. To me, university diplomas can be death certificates. Diplomas
often lead to making a living, rather than creating a living.
I don’t believe you can tell other people how to be happy, how to be
creative, compassionate. It’s only example that does that. If a teacher
does anything, it is to provide an example that we can learn from.
A life of creativity is a life of risk. It is a life of going beyond your ordinary,
of embracing the odyssey, of leaving your familiar, of trying to make a contribution.
It could be through art, though I don’t like that name. The word “art”
has been hijacked by the Art Mafia. But, it could be through art, it could be
through compassion, it could be through contemplation, it could be through devotion
to someone or your children. It’s something that is creative. Not something
where you’re sitting at a computer pressing buttons.
To create one’s own life is a risky business. There are no ground rules,
but the road is full of mighty and heroic examples of men and women who have
given their life over to creativity. Who have not sought material gain, but
who have sought gain in the realm of the spirit, which, for me, is what infuses
life with contentment or peace or happiness. Though again, as I said, I don’t
believe in pursuing peace or happiness for themselves. We have the Pope, world
leaders, politicians, running around calling for world peace. Well, what else
are they going to call for? We don’t produce peace by calling for it.
We produce peace through social justice. And, without following that path, we
will have no peace. So, all of these hollow shibboleths are nothing but that
for me.
RWM: What has been most difficult about this life that you’ve chosen
to live?
GR: Well, the truth is I have no complaints. I don’t mean that it’s
easy.
Life is difficult. Waking up in the morning. Getting into my shoes. I’m
very tall. Getting into pants. I’m not trying to belittle your question,
but I’ve learned to accept adversity as the other side of celebration.
It’s all part of the same thing. Any sacrifice that I made is minuscule
compared to the luxury, to the privilege I have of spending my life in this
way. You have to, in effect, jump off the cliff to do this work. Forget about
Social Security and insurance and income, not that we don’t need some
version of those things to live, but one thing leads to another. And if you
embrace this you invite these entities, this energy to yourself that’s
out there for everyone to tap into. So, I don’t feel it’s been difficult.
I guess the biggest difficulty, now that you push me, is that I haven’t
done enough. I spend most of my time trying to raise money and that is a big
frustration for me. I would much rather be in production. But this is a privileged
path – making films without narrative and without actors. At the end of
the day it’s a freak show and you’re not going to get interest from
the entertainment industry. So I have to look for angels that are willing to
make a bad deal for the love of the project. To waste the advice their lawyers
and pencil yaddies give them and do this for love.
Everything important has two sides. We live in a world of duality. My difficulties
raising money have actually helped me become more profoundly involved in the
project that I’m doing. If I had been able to do Naqoyqatsi in 1990 when
I first developed the scenario, it would not be the film that I have today,
because of all of the focus and devotion that I’ve had to put into it
over ten years. I’ve done three other projects in the interim, but I’ve
been nursing this, trying to nourish it.
RWM: In what way did that affect the film?
RG: Well, you know, a circle is a circle. But a circle can become more profound
by growing. It’s no less integral, but it’s grown through the shear
dent of living. I don’t want to say it’s better, but it’s
certainly different. For me it feels deeper, feels more rooted and that comes
from my experience.
In that sense, experimentally we’re all young. I’m an old person
but I feel like I’m just beginning. I’m not far along the road.
I’ve learned very little. I’m 60 years old and I guess like many
other 60-year-olds my head feels like I’m 11. Of course my body is dragging.
I learned long ago not to base what I do on the opinions of others, especially
critics. I try to take some understanding from what they say, but, fundamentally,
you have to please yourself. I mean whom else can you please, if you want to
be really honest? In that sense, we’re all selfish. Hopefully, we can
avoid the vanity of selfishness and recognize that power comes from this person
that’s inside of us. Even though the “I” does not exist, it’s
a fabrication of perception, there’s something unnamable that’s
unique in each person. Even if they’re a chip off the old block.
RWM: What do you think about asking wealthy people – the primarily beneficiaries
of the system –- for money to do films that criticize the system.
RG: First of all, I’ve used myself as the primary example of my subject
matter for these films, because I participate in the very thing that I’m
criticizing. No human being alive today who wants to do a work that can be seen
can exempt themselves from participation. Any money of any size is dirty money.
So, if you’re looking for money for your magazine or me for my film, know
that it’s coming from a dirty source. All this stuff about socially-conscious
investment is pure horseshit as far as I’m concerned. Maybe I should restate
that. It’s misguided.
Investment on this level on the global level for so-called conscious projects
is an oxymoron. It doesn’t exist. So I take dirty money and wash it. I
make it clean. To do these films, requires money. I can’t have an immaculate
conception. I’ll never be able to earn that money. I have to get it from
those that have it. Those that have it in abundance. Some of them are like myself,
lunatics, generous and willing to make a bad deal for love of the project. So
to me if one is not willing to dirty themselves to deal with contradiction,
to walk on the razor’s edge, then one should retreat to the desert or
the mountain and forget about life in society. Because to be in this world,
no one has pure hands.
